Selected Articles
How to Transition a Grown Child’s Bedroom – Without Any Drama
From The Washington Post
When Lizzie Haney returned to her parents’ home near Grand Rapids, Mich., for her first Christmas break from college in Chicago, she discovered two changes in her room.
The first — her mother’s “adult-ification” of the space, taking down old posters and adding new, more sophisticated bedding and decor — felt like a loving gesture, a nod to Lizzie’s maturing tastes. The other felt like a personal attack.
Her dad “had put some of his suits and things in her closet,” says Haney’s mother, Dana Hoebeke. “It was empty. She’d taken everything with her. But she’d brought clothes home with her, obviously, so she came back out, and she was like: ‘What’s that stuff doing in my closet? Get it out of here!’”
Haney, a self-proclaimed neatnik, had a rough first semester living with two less-than-tidy roommates. So even this practical appropriation of her usually ordered closet rankled.
My 15-year-old daughter had just completed the first portion of her driver’s ed class (including six hours of on-the-road training) when she asked to drive home from her softball practice.
After a moment of mom-whiplash — my baby! — I shook it off, knowing this needed to become the new normal. Michigan, where we live, requires drivers under 18 who get a learner’s permit to log a whopping 50 hours of driving practice time with a parent in the car before they can qualify for a license at age 16.
So as I adjusted to being in the passenger seat, my daughter pulled into traffic, and I said, “We’ll need to turn left at the next light.” She then steered the car as far left as possible, so that we’d soon be face-to-face with oncoming traffic.
Panicking while trying to keep my voice calm, I guided her back toward the street’s central turn lane and thought, “Why, after completing a course on driving, doesn’t she have a firmer handle on the rules of the road?”
The answer is that, over time, states have shifted the responsibility of educating new teen drivers from public school systems, which used to offer free classes and driving lessons during the summer, to parents and private driving schools.
The Complicated Task of Writing My Father’s Eulogy
From Next Avenue
You know that thing we do when we're worried? Where we say, out loud, the most terrifying reason our loved one might not be returning our texts, or answering the phone, but they're usually just fine? I do that.
But at least one time, I wasn't overreacting. I'd been tragically, terribly right.
On a Monday evening in October of 2021, I'd dropped my two daughters off at karate and started driving toward the apartment we'd moved my father into seven months earlier.
I'd been emailing, messaging and calling him since the day before, and I'd heard nothing in response — which wasn't too unusual. After being hounded by collections agencies for years (before my sisters and I learned of his money woes and helped him file for bankruptcy), my 78-year-old father had learned to ignore his phone's various rings and pings.
Even so, I had begun to worry.
We're in a New Era of Period Positivity, and It's Empowering for Young Girls
From Good Housekeeping
Earlier this year, just days shy of my daughter’s 12th birthday, I was changing her bed’s sheets when she said, in an offhand but discreet way, “Just so you know, I started my period. But it’s fine. I’m taking care of it. I’m just letting you know, because you asked me to tell you.”
Putting on my best poker face, I offered a quick hug and kiss and told her to let me know if she had any questions or needed anything — but I secretly marveled at how she’d seemingly taken this transition in stride, when my own first period experience, in the 1980s, had been shrouded in fear, confusion and shame. (You know. The kind that makes a frantic fifth grader wad up half a dozen tissues into her underpants.)
Then, a few months after my daughter’s low-key pronouncement, two 11-year-old Girl Scouts arrived at our door and asked my husband for a donation to their Bronze Award project. They were assembling first period kits — packed with a variety of pads and tampons, starter Diva Cups (donated by the company, after the girls pled their case via Zoom) and junior-sized period underwear — for every fifth grade girl in the school district.
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It’s fitting that I watched Encore Musical Theatre Company’s new production of Into the Woods with my 12-year-old daughter.
Not just because the girl can sing every word of the show’s patter song (“Your Fault”)—she used to fall asleep listening to the show’s cast recording each night—but also because she now lives in that interstitial, fog-laden forest known as middle school, where preteens blindly fumble their way out of childhood.
And frankly, if I had to name one show that’s about the terrifyingly fraught and difficult process of growing up, it would be Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods.
A fairy-tale mashup that premiered on Broadway in 1987—long before the word “mashup” became such a regular part of our lexicon—Woods interweaves the stories of Cinderella (Ash Moran), Rapunzel (Lucia Flowers), Little Red Riding Hood (Sienna Berkseth), and Jack (Tsumari Patterson) and the Beanstalk.
How? By way of a cursed baker (Marcus Jordan) and his wife (Jessica Grové), who can’t have children until they gather the four items requested by the old witch next door (Jennifer Horne). But even when the couple succeeds, and everyone—fairy-tale protagonists included—gets what they want, in its darker second act Woods dares to venture beyond “happily ever after” and ask, “OK, now what?”
For female inmates, Shakespeare in Prison is liberating
From The Detroit Free Press
On a recent Tuesday night, 16 women gathered backstage and changed into costumes to play their roles in a production of Shakespeare’s “Othello.”
The space hummed with the giddy electricity of actors preparing to perform in front of an audience. The actress playing Iago, wearing brown slacks, a white shirt and a dark-red sash (which also holstered a foam sword), huddled up with Othello to do some last-minute line cramming.
Brabantio tucked her long, dark-blond hair up inside a hat. Cassio smirked and held up a spare handkerchief, jokingly noting that this all-important prop went missing onstage during the previous week’s performance. And Desdemona pinched the sides of her white, long-sleeved, knee-length dress and girlishly skipped across the stage.
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Other Articles by Jenn McKee:
I Failed My 10 Year Old's Diabolical Santa Test - From Scary Mommy
I Suck at Running but Keep Going Anyway - From Shondaland
Repeated Photos of J.J. McCarthy Meditating Show Rare Moment in Macho Sport - From The Detroit Free Press
Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea Tries to Put Recent Turmoil Behind it - From The Detroit Free Press
It’s Time to Bring Back Our Kids’ Pre-Pandemic Routines - But How? - From Good Housekeeping
Musician Matthew Milia on Solo Work and Keeping His Day Job - From Hour Detroit
“Middlesex” 20 Years Later - From Hour Detroit
Finding Community During Quarantine in my Hometown of Farmington - From Metromode
Middle School Algebra: My Daughter and I Bonded Over Homework - From Your Teen
Jason Seiler: The artful caricatures of this Chicago-based illustrator reveal inner truths. - From Communication Arts
Puzzling out which Ann Arborites construct crosswords for The New York Times - From Pulp
